March 2018

Economies grow faster when more women work, but in every region of the world, restrictions exist on women’s employment. The 2018 edition of Women Business and the Law examines 189 economies and finds that in 104 of them, women face some kind of restriction. 30% of economies restrict women from working in jobs deemed hazardous, arduous or morally inappropriate; 40% restrict women from working in certain industries, and 15% restrict women from working at night.

It’s amazing to see what technology can do these days! Satellites provide daily images of almost every location on earth, and computers can be trained to process massive amounts of data generated from them to produce insightful analysis/information. This is just one of the demonstrations of artificial intelligence (AI). AI can go beyond just reading images captured from space, it can help improve lives overall.

For urban governance, machine learning and AI are increasingly used to provide near real-time analysis of how cities change in practice – for example, through the conversion of green areas into built-up structures. By teaching computers what to look for in satellite images, rapidly expanding sources of satellite data (public and commercial), together with machine learning algorithms, can be leveraged to quickly reveal how actual city development aligns with planning and zoning or which communities are most prone to flooding. This provides insights beyond the basic satellite snapshots and time-lapse visualizations that can now be readily generated for any areas of interest.

But the barriers to applying these technologies can still seem daunting for many cities around the world. It’s not always clear how exactly to analyze this massive amount of satellite data, nor how to get access to it.

Happy International Women’s Day! This is an important year to celebrate – from global politics to the Oscars last weekend, gender equality and inclusion are firmly on the agenda.

But outside movies and matters of government, we see the effects on gender equality every day, in how we live and work. One area we have data on comes from companies: what share of firms have a female CEO or top manager?

Only 1 in 5 firms worldwide have a female CEO or top manager, and it is more common among the smaller firms. While this does vary by around the world – Thailand and Cambodia are the only two countries where the data show more women running companies than men.

Better representation of women in business is important. It ensures a variety of views and ideas are represented, and when the top manager of a firm is woman, that firm is likely to have a larger share of permanent female workers.

When it comes to revolutions, the data revolution has certainly been less bloody than, say, those in the 18th and 19th centuries. Equally transformative? A question for historians.

AidData, a research and innovation lab located at the College of William & Mary in the US, set out in 2017, to identify what data decision makers in low and middle-income countries use, whose data they use, why they use it, and which data are most helpful.

Policymakers consult information from the World Bank more than other foreign/international organizations.

If you want opinion leaders in client countries to be aware of the Bank’s data and knowledge, bring it to their attention. If you expect them to find it through an internet search, you might be disappointed.

Opinion leaders are most likely to regard the knowledge and information helpful if it helps them better understand challenging policy issues and will help them develop implementation strategies in response.

Make sure the knowledge and information reflects the local context (be inclusive).

Tjark Tjin-A-Tsoi is doing things differently. Before his appointment as the Director General for Statistics Netherlands in April 2014, he was the General Director of the Netherlands Forensic Institute. No doubt that’s why phrases like “actionable intelligence” and forensic analogies about “tracing data” pepper his vision for national statistics in the Netherlands. At a recent presentation here at the World Bank, Tjin-A-Tsoi shared his thoughts on what a modern statistics office looks like, how cognitive science informs data communications, and whether big data will render official statistics obsolete.

A new approach to official statistics

Almost four years after Tjin-A-Tsoi took the helm, Statistics Netherlands has been transformed. It has its own newsroom, a team of media professionals, and employs the latest cognitive science research in its quest to deliver statistical truths to the public. It recently opened a shining new Center for Big Data Statistics, and has an innovation portal for beta products which invites public feedback. One of their current beta products is a Happiness Meter, an interactive infographic that people in the Netherlands can use to calculate and compare their personal happiness score with the rest of the Dutch population.

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This blog is a forum for discussing development data issues and open access to data. Open access to data is a key part of the World Bank's commitment to sharing our knowledge to improve people's lives.

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